What Is a POS System and How Does It Work?

What is a POS system?
Point of Sale System (POS) is a system that integrates software and hardware to assist merchants in processing receipts, inventory, purchase management and other store operations.

Most of the common POS systems start with an automatic reading device (e.g. cash register), you only need to use the barcode reader to scan the barcode of the product or enter the product number, then you can read the information related to the goods (e.g. product name, unit price, quantity sold, etc.) in real time, and use the various components of the POS system to distribute the sales data to databases, and through the analysis of the sales data of the system, you can accurately manage the sales and inventory, get the detailed or comprehensive business analysis as well as the management information of the slow-moving products, making it easy for you to improve the efficiency of your business and enhance your competitiveness in the market.

What are the standard packages for POS systems?
There are two parts to a popular POS system: software and hardware. While software is responsible for coordinating and integrating all sales-related information and distributing it to separate systems for further processing, the hardware primarily complements the software by helping to perform physical tasks, such as scanning product barcodes and printing receipts.

Typical POS software and hardware:
System screen: the screen host of the software display screen, used to display order total, product weight, etc.
Keyboard / Touch screen: to select products and enter data
Scan Gun: Reads product barcodes for product information and distributes the information to different operational modules via software
Cashier: store the cash received from sales, and use it for cashier and checkout
Invoicing machine: prints receipts or invoices to customers
Credit card reader: allows customers to pay by credit card, and most of it supports new electronic payment methods such as Octopus, Alipay, WeChat Pay, PayMe, etc. in recent years
POS system software: to integrate the above data in real time, record sales information, and consolidate relevant reports